Influence of restoration measures on plant community in alpine meadow

To investigate the influence of different restoration measures on plant communities, fertilization, overseeding, sward ripping and comprehensive treatment were applied in alpine meadow ecosystem. The results showed that the four treatment measures had different effects on plant functional group, plant community structure, species diversity, and productivity of grassland. Different measures had no significant effects on plant functional group composition, but had different influence on species number within functional group. Compared with community coverage (P0.05), the community height showed significant variation (P0.05) under four treatments. Four treatment measures significantly improved aboveground productivity but had different effects on plant species number and Simpson index. As for species numbers, only reseeding and comprehensive treatment had significant difference compared with controls (P0.05). While for Simpson index, besides comprehensive treatment, the other three treatments all had significant difference compared with controls (P0.05). Our research suggests that although restoration measures used in our experiment had different effects on species composition, community structure, and species diversity, they obviously promoted grassland productivity. These measures, therefore, can be considered as profitable restoration practices in management of degraded grassland.